Our Philosophy

Our diverse and growing world seeks students who can think creatively, work well with peers, utilize long attention spans, and care for detail. We encourage our students through project-based learning to “take their time to make things special”. This approach allows for deep skill and self-efficacy development.

We believe that your child has remarkable strengths as well as areas for growth.

Our curriculum and dedicated teaching team of skilled educators work together to scaffold for your child’s learning edge. Our distinctive 4:1 student to teacher ratio supports this individualized approach to teaching and allows us to deliver on our philosophy:

Learning by doing builds confidence and independence.

We are a program that seeks to address the whole child and individualize to his/her 'Zone' (Vygotsky) of learning needs.

We nurture social development and believe it to be a primary focus of the school’s agenda.

We engage in unit and project-based study as effective curriculum methods, and use art as a catalyst; learning through visual arts, music, dance and dramatic play.

We use multi-procedures (“extended learning”) and combined curricula to develop project effectiveness. This is to say that children learn to respect the time it takes to create something of worth and that attention spans and involvement in the process are enhanced through satisfying individual experiences.

We believe in collaborative learning whereby the students and teachers are involved together in the process of development, sharing a mutual respect as researchers in education and facilitators for each other. If children get the message early on that learning is an exciting journey that never ends and that we do it together, not in vacuum, they will embrace the process forever.

We promote the approach of “learning by doing” with age-similar companions and adult guidance.

We feel that creativity is a natural outgrowth from the ability to do something; and therefore we nurture skill development in children, to promote the “I can do it” response and foster independence.

"It's impossible to truly appreciate everything that makes Russian Hill so special when your child is at the school. It is only after he or she graduates and goes on to other wonderful schools that you realize the quality of the small classroom instruction, the individualized approach to teaching each and every one of our children, the unmatched quality of the artwork they bring home, and the social skills gained in the mixed-age classroom."